First days in the North *cnt* H-W Siege Day 1

I don't know if I want to call it writers block or maybe I've been burnt out on EVE last few days. \o/

Well I'm in a good mood today so here we go.

I don't know how other peeps in the NC feel about this but to me the invasion of H-W by the Southern Coalition was a big big event in my EVE life. It was the first major conflict to take place in a system I thought to be relatively safe.

But Ill get to the invasion in a minute.

I believe this was my 3rd or 4th week in Reliables Inc. And I was 3 days away from being able to fly a Bassilisk (Caldari Logistic ship) When the order to deploy our ships to H-W was given. Normally I kept all of my NC Fleet fit ships in our home system, so I moved 3 drakes 2 Ferox's and 2 Megathrons plus my stealth bomber. Sadly one of my megathrons was very unlucky as it the guns were in H-W (i had just bought them there as there was none in my home system) so when I ran into a small gate camp I simply just died with little resistance from my drones.

Losing the mega by myself was not eligible for reimbursements which dampened my mood. So I took one of the drakes that I had for PVP and made it into a ratting ship. Back in my Empire days I had a sweet Rattlesnake I used to solo lvl 4 missions with ease. It was a perk from cross training Caldari and Gallante. But as I was still not used to the area and had trouble Identifying systems, routes and intel channel. I figured it would un-wise to bring the rattler down to null sec and instead sold it to pay for PVP ships and a Gila blueprint.
Losing that mega left me broke, and while I had Gila blueprint and wanted to use it to rat, I decided ill just buy the minerals once I get enough isk from ratting with the drake. So I started to rat in various system with little rewards. As I was still new to null sec in terms of "PVE" I would just go belt to belt clearing out rats and avoiding reds in lcl.
Later that night I would explore the H-W belts and watch T.V. While my Heavy missiles chewed away at the rats. I saw my wallet climb a few mil got tired and got ready to log off.

I dont recall who said it but someone mentioned it was a good idea for us to not log off in a station but in a deep safe spot or in a POS. Which is very good advice. And as such I logged off in a Majesta POS

Heres some more advice for you. Dont log off in a ratting ship unless you have a pvp ship in a POS =p.

So I go to sleep. Go to church (as its a sunday i think) come back home and log in.
First thing I notice is my mailbox is blinking with 4-5 mails. But I didnt think anything of it.
Second thing I notice is that the POS Im in has been reinforced. Third thing I notice was that I looked around the system and EVERYTHING had been reinforced. I looked at the Intel channels NC channels and it was chaos. I had finally made sense of what happened when I took a look at local and saw nothing but red. H-W was under siege.

CTAs go out. Corp is spammed Alliance is spammed, no carebear was left unturned. This was a Call To Action.

Several things had already gone wrong. Our main fleets were out of system lured away by the SC dropping Sovereignty blockade units in systems drawing our fleets away from H-W. A great number of our players had logged off in H-W station which had about 50 warp disruption bubbles surrounding every bit of it preventing anyone who was foolish enough to undock unable to warp off and face instant death by the campers who awaited them. There were gate camps at every entrance to H-W. The jump bridges were disabled and the enemy had a fairly large capital ship fleet in the system which included several Titans and super carriers.

To make news worse turns out it was a 2-day Russian holiday and they bringing the most numbers meant long lasting trouble. Plus the SC boasted that they were going to hold us there for 5 days until H-W fell into their hands.

However not all was hopeless. Despite being in a ratting drake, I was not the only one to not log off in a station. Calls go out through back channels , everyone who was in H-W and not docked up got in a fleet of mostly sniper BS's and BC's . I dont recall who the FC was at the time but the man was brilliant. It was our 50 man gang vs a 2-3 fleets of 200+ one of which was a cap fleet. We started using gurrila tactics, probing out afk idiots in "safe" spots and killing them. Some of which woke up and called for help only to die or we get away before their Interdictors could catch us. We'd kill here and there. Even got a regular carrier kill at one point.

We had more and more people log on and more and more enemies log off as the so called "US time zone players" came about but were either logged inside the station waiting to be broken out or holding in nearby systems waiting for a chance to enter. So we kept up or hit and run attacks and podded as much as we could. These guys had a longer logistical train to go through to get back to H-W then we did. They die it takes them longer to get back to H-W then it takes us. It also appeared that their carriers were loaded with HIC's and DIC's to help keep up the siege on their end.

H-W had been sieged for I believe 10 hours by the point I logged on. and about 3 hours of guerrilla tactics we started more aggressive tactics. We split up our numbers and did some attacks to lure the enemies off station and managed to sneak a few fast ships out increasing our numbers.

Then the FC did something particularly brilliant. They warped our fleets to two spots in close proximity at a deep deep safe zone. I'm talking over 140 AU's away from H-W station. Halfway warping there we see a Cyno go up and get told its a friendly one

(Cynos allow captial ships to jump from out of system to the system where the cyno was lit)
Also note that once a cyno field is lit be it friendly or hostile EVERYONE in the system can see it and warp to it.

We get word that almost everything the enemy had was rushing to the cyno like a raging bull stampede to the cyno. And when they got there, they said hello to several warp bubbles around the cyno and our sniper fleets to the north and south of them. We killed I believe 12 interdictors that tried to capture our fleets and several battleships I think even a carrier or two before their cap fleet retreated. During this little "distraction" we were able to get a ton of people out of H-W station.

Our guerrilla tactics continued, and more traps were laid sprung and enemies destroyed. Enemies would hunt us attack us attempt to warp bubble us only to see us warp off with very light casualties Eventually while the BS snipers played havoc with the enemy fleets the BC support groups went to work with hit and runs on the stations bubbles in a effort to free our trapped comrades.
We had to run a few times but eventually dropped the bubbles and the order for everyone to undock was given.

The SC was beginning to be overrun. Gate camps were failing more and more Northern Coalition were breaking into the system. The SC just were not able to keep up with their numbers.

NC' caps were jumping in and SC caps were jumping out. The so called 5 day camp or "PR 2.0" as some SC peeps called it lasted roughly 15 hours. Good effort and one heck of a surprise attack. But as Bobby Atlas would later say "We walked into a bear cave popped a few rounds for lulz and waited to see what would happen...well ladies...we got eaten"

Carriers and logistics began repairing the station and POS's while the rest of the NC began Reinforcing the enemy POS's that were dropped in our system earlier that day. I docked up in H-W switched my ratting drake which served me well in that fight for my NC fit Megathron undocked went to a deep safe spot and logged for the night.

The fight was not yet over. The SC was bringing another fight to us shortly we knew it was coming but it was a long day and I needed some rest. I was prepared and thankfully so was alot more players this time around.